Livonia planners reject Seven Mile Jiffy Lube rezoning, shelve housing plan for 45 days

City Government · Planning & Zoning

In a three-hour session, the Planning Commission denied a C-2 rezoning outright, tabled Book 5 of the Livonia Vision 21 Master Plan over what members called a failed public-notice effort, and split 5–1 on carving parking out of the back of five Camden Street lots.

1,248th Public Hearing and Regular Meeting · Tuesday, August 11, 2026 · Livonia City Hall Auditorium, 33000 Civic Center Drive

The Livonia City Planning Commission worked through six petitions and a set of minutes over roughly three hours Tuesday night, adjourning at 10:08 p.m. after a debate over housing policy that consumed more than an hour on its own and ended with commissioners sending the city's draft housing plan back for another round of public comment.

Chairman Ian Wilshaw presided. Six of seven commissioners were present; Vice Chairman Glen W. Long, Jr. was absent. Assistant Planning Director Jacob Uhazie presented every item on the agenda and read the departmental correspondence into the record.

The night's clearest signal came early, when the commission unanimously denied a rezoning that would have cleared the way for a Jiffy Lube on a long-vacant Seven Mile Road parcel.

What the commission decided All six petitions and the minutes, with the motion, the roll-call result, and the conditions attached.

Resolutions adopted by the Planning Commission take effect seven days after adoption. On rezoning and waiver use petitions, the commission recommends and City Council makes the final determination after its own hearing.

Item 1 — A denial on Seven Mile Petition 2026-06-01-02, Guggenheim Development, LLC

Uhazie framed the site as a 1.32-acre vacant lot bounded by the Canterbury Park apartment complex to the north, the Pierson Center across Seven Mile to the south, a memory care facility across Mayfield Avenue to the east, and a commercial retail plaza to the west. The Livonia Vision 21 future land use map designates the parcel Corridor Commercial, a category whose description, Uhazie noted, treats automotive-oriented uses as appropriate only "in certain instances."

That qualifier drew Commissioner Wafa Dinaro's first question of the night, and Uhazie's answer was pointed: extra care should be taken in deciding whether this stretch of corridor is the right place for a heavily auto-dependent use. Commissioner David Bongero asked whether a screening wall would be required against the residential; Uhazie said some form of property wall would be needed.

Wilshaw reminded the room that the night's question was zoning, not site design — a site plan would return separately if the rezoning advanced.

The petitioner was represented by a civil engineer from Excel Engineering, Inc. of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, who told the commission the project would comply fully with C-2 standards and that the parcel's size left room for added landscaping or buffering. Pressed by Commissioner Patrick Droze on what made the site hard to develop under C-1 — and why a Jiffy Lube rather than something more harmonious with the adjacent commercial properties — the engineer said he was not claiming no other use could work there, only presenting a vision of what the parcel could become. Commissioner Sam Caramagno asked whether the client had looked at other Livonia sites and why this one; the engineer said site selection was handled on the front end by Guggenheim Development.

One resident spoke, and did so without taking a side: he noted the parcel has sat vacant a long time, recalled the auto service center at the former Kmart at Seven Mile and Farmington, and observed from the map that the site has few competitors within a mile — which, he suggested, was probably why the developer picked it.

Commissioner Peter Ventura offered the denying resolution as soon as the hearing closed. There was no discussion. The roll was unanimous.

Item 2 — Beer and wine to go at Fogo de Chão Petition 2026-06-02-18, JPHOWE, PLLC

The Brazilian steakhouse is under construction on the site of the former Comerica Bank office building, part of a larger redevelopment that also includes a retail plaza and a Whole Foods Market. The 10,018-square-foot restaurant was approved under Petition 2024-02-02-03, and the associated development agreement already granted a Class C license; the S.D.M. was not included, so the operator returned for it separately.

Uhazie told the commission staff is seeing that pattern often now — established restaurants and new operators coming back for an S.D.M. they had not originally pursued — and said the department's practice going forward is to have new restaurants apply for both at once. The nearest existing S.D.M. establishment, Fleming's on Fox Drive, sits beyond the ordinance's 500-foot separation requirement, and no church or school falls within 400 feet.

Attorney J. Patrick Howe represented the applicant, describing the license as an accessory to the dining experience for customers who want to take a bottle of wine home. It would be Fogo de Chão's second Michigan location, after Troy.

Most of the questioning went to how alcohol reaches the customer. Howe described a strict on-site carding policy — anyone appearing 40 or under is carded, servers are certified through a state-approved course, and a single violation ends a server's employment — and a separate process for third-party delivery, where the sale completes only when the driver confirms the recipient is 21 and uploads a copy of the identification. Ventura asked about Michigan's cork-and-go provision, and Howe confirmed a partially finished bottle can be recorked and taken home under state law, separate from what the S.D.M. would allow. Asked what share of business the license represents, Howe called it very low but an expectation of the format.

Caramagno pushed on the mechanics of a delivery driver arriving to find an underage customer — the product is returned and refunded, Howe said — and asked whether the restaurant sells a house-brand wine. Howe said he was not aware of one, and noted a restaurant cannot manufacture wine itself.

A resident objected, arguing that when Fleming's and Outback came before the commission, both said they would not sell through third-party delivery services because they could not verify the recipient's age, and that the same standard should apply here. Wilshaw noted for the record that those were voluntary limitations the petitioners themselves offered, not restrictions the commission imposed. Howe responded that third-party facilitators are licensed by the state, renew annually, and complete the same server training as on-premise staff.

Wilshaw closed with a question about logistics that got the biggest laugh of the item — whether a to-go customer at an all-you-can-eat churrascaria simply keeps raising the flag while the delivery driver waits. Howe: not available for takeout.

Item 3 — A consignment shop, and a landlord's rough night Petition 2026-07-02-19, Hands of Time Estate Sales, LLC

The petition came to the commission through code enforcement rather than by plan. Megan S. Lewis, owner of Hands of Time Estate Sales, told commissioners the shop had been open since February in a soft-opening posture and had not realized a second-hand use required a waiver on a site already zoned for retail. The business previously operated from warehouse space on Stark Road that could not be used for retail at all; the Middlebelt storefront was chosen so it could take consignments from people downsizing a few pieces at a time. "We just want to keep stuff out of landfills as well," she said.

Ventura established with staff that the business has generated no complaints — inspectors had been on site for a certificate of occupancy, not a violation. Uhazie said the department has been finding a number of consignment operators in the same position recently, unaware the waiver was required.

The sharper exchange was with the property owner, who owns the multi-tenant building. Caramagno said he had visited after the study meeting and found the site "embarrassing looking" — overgrown weeds, faded striping, and, memorably, a paddle boat sitting in the grass behind the building, which the owner said he knew nothing about. Caramagno pressed on how a property reaches that condition under an active owner, asked whether he objected to building a dumpster enclosure, and asked about a blank pylon sign out front. Partway through the exchange the owner's nose began to bleed at the podium; Wilshaw offered a recess, which the owner declined, and later warned the audience away from that microphone until it was cleaned.

I'd like to see you be successful. Very successful. But the property doesn't want to attract people to come there. Commissioner Sam Caramagno, to the property owner

Lewis returned to explain that the tall pylon sign predates her tenancy and is grandfathered, and that replacing it would trigger the current six-foot height limit. She said she had already added plantings at the entrance and cleared weeds along the Subway frontage. It was noted from the dais that the original approved site plan for the building appears to have required a walled dumpster enclosure that was never built.

Droze raised a separate observation from years of street-level imagery: the building has no parking lot light poles, and the wall-mounted LEDs appear aimed into the right-of-way — something he asked inspections to look at. Droze also suggested that if the lot is restriped, the awkward space in the far northeast corner could be dropped to improve circulation. Lewis said parking has not been tight, noting that neighboring Tacos22 is closed Sundays while her shop plans to operate Wednesday through Sunday.

The Finance Department had reported an unpaid water and sewer balance; Uhazie told the commission a receipt showed payment made July 28, leaving the account current. The finance letter for this petition is not reproduced in the agenda packet, so the amount is not confirmed here.

Item 4 — Book 5 goes back out for comment Petition 2026-01-07-01, City Planning Commission

The housing amendment took longer than every other item combined, and the argument was less about the plan's contents than about whether anyone in Livonia had seen it.

Uhazie laid out the history: the process began in 2024 with a $50,000 Housing Readiness Incentive Grant from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority; City Council approved the funding in September 2024 and retained McKenna to draft the amendment; a steering committee included two council representatives, two planning commissioners, representatives of the housing commission including its director, and a member of the brownfield authority. Uhazie said housing became a required element of a community master plan under a 2024 amendment to the Michigan Planning Enabling Act; Smith, describing the same requirement later in the discussion, dated the amendment to November 2021.

Donovan Smith, AICP, the McKenna principal planner managing the project, reported that the draft was released for the statutory 45-day comment period and that no public comment had been received.

Dinaro did not accept that as a neutral fact. "It's going to be very difficult for me to vote on this with zero public comment, because that tells me that no one has seen it," she said. Ventura confirmed with Smith that beyond the statutory notices, there was no mailing or direct outreach to residents.

Smith and Uhazie both pointed to earlier engagement: an open house on April 25, 2025 at the library that drew about 40 attendees, and a community survey that returned roughly 600 responses, with results appended to the plan. Smith added that in his experience across multiple Michigan master plans, written comment during the 45-day window is rare, and the public hearing itself is typically where residents show up.

Droze reframed the problem in terms of a changed media landscape. Front-end engagement shapes a draft, he said, but engagement on the finished product matters too — and Livonia no longer has the Observer. "It's one thing to put a link on the website. It's another thing to actually push it out to the community."

Ventura, who told the commission he chaired an earlier city master plan committee and also served on the steering committee that reviewed this amendment, delivered the item's most sustained challenge — not to the notice, but to the premise. Drawing on his own work in real estate, he said he had surveyed the housing stock between the city's eastern and western boundaries south of Plymouth Road and found ample inventory well under $300,000, much of it under $200,000, in well-maintained neighborhoods. "I don't know that it gets more affordable than that," he said, adding that those homes could not be rebuilt today at the prices they sell for.

This report sounds nice, okay? But I'm not sure that it changes a thing for a young person or a young family trying to find a home to live in and to put their family in in this community. Commissioner Peter Ventura

Smith's answer ran to the plan's mechanics. Book 5 identifies the city's expiring deed-restricted affordable developments — he named Newburgh Village and Brashear Tower — and sets an objective of preserving those units rather than adding new ones. It flags aging housing stock and the maintenance costs that come with it. And it uses conceptual plans for the priority redevelopment sites — Laurel Park, the Sears site, and a smaller third parcel on Plymouth Road — to show how smaller-scale, mixed-income, mixed-use development could work. The actionable step, he said repeatedly, is zoning: Livonia currently has no district that easily accommodates a five-unit building, an eight-unit building and ground-floor retail on the same site, and without one, developers interested in that product go elsewhere rather than pursue rezonings and variances.

Ventura pressed on accessory dwelling units, which had come up in committee. Smith confirmed the plan recommends considering ADUs as a permitted use but does not enact anything — implementation would require a formal zoning text amendment, with its own public hearings and Council approval, and the commission would control where ADUs are and are not allowed. Ventura also got Smith to acknowledge that new construction is very unlikely to deliver housing at what the plan describes as affordable levels.

Uhazie described the plan's concrete asks in narrower terms than the discussion implied: identify sites ripe for redevelopment, and begin tracking metrics such as the time from application to permit so the city can find and remove inefficiencies. Shaving a four-month approval to three months, he said, is cost the city can actually take out of a project. Wilshaw was blunt about his reservations: "I don't want to just be checking a box, and there's a certain part of this to me that feels like that's kind of what we're doing."

What residents told the commission

Wilshaw suspended his usual time limit and opened the floor, first cautioning that the hearing concerned Book 5 only and that Books 1 through 4 of Vision 21 were not being reopened.

A member of the Greenleaf Commission on Sustainability called the document a thoughtful and thorough assessment of existing conditions, but objected to the word "sustainability" being used to mean housing alone, noting the plan says nothing about reusing old buildings and lists her commission as a resource for only one item when it could contribute to several. She also said she had not seen the draft on the city's social media: "Social media is our Observer now, and we need to adjust to the times."

A resident of the Kimberly Oaks area said he follows city business closely, has sat through master plan and zoning meetings, and learned about Book 5 only because a neighbor posted it in a subdivision group — adding that after sitting through the entire discussion he was still not sure what Book 5 was. He said single-family homes are what drew him to Livonia and what he wants the city to protect.

Another resident asked the commission to remove one specific parcel from the plan: land north of Six Mile Road and east of Merriman Road proposed to shift from parks and community use to low-density residential. He cited its position next to a tributary of the Rouge River and its federal protections, an apparent floodplain, an adjoining Livonia Public Schools parcel whose future use the district has not announced, and the small size of the parcel once streets, sidewalks and setbacks are subtracted.

The resident who had spoken on the Jiffy Lube item returned to walk through the plan's strategic action plan on pages 37 through 39, questioning an action item requiring high-quality building and construction materials in new construction and rehabilitation — a requirement, he argued, that pushes price points up in a community whose housing distribution is already concentrated in the middle. He also said the plan's reference to 1,400 homes needed by 2050 should specify what kinds of homes.

The resident who had objected to the liquor license raised data questions. He said the plan cites roughly 94,942 housing units while the city assessor reported 37,443 at a budget and finance committee meeting the previous night, and that dollar figures on page 28 appear to reflect state equalized value rather than market value. He also asked whether the plan addresses infrastructure capacity — sewer, water and electrical — if ADUs proliferate, and questioned a 7% vacancy rate against the steady stream of residents online looking for rental houses.

A final speaker questioned the comparison communities in the plan's median home value tables, which set Livonia against Canton Township, Northville and Plymouth in one place but against Detroit, Warren, Dearborn and statewide figures in another, leaving out other Wayne County cities where Livonia compares favorably.

The motion

Dinaro moved to table for 45 days. Ventura, who had argued for 45 or 60 rather than 30, supported. Tabling motions carry no discussion period, and the roll was unanimous. Wilshaw sent staff off with clear direction to advertise the draft in as many ways as possible.

Item 5 — Two more buildings at Clover Self Storage Petition 2026-06-08-03, Contineo Group

The 5.54-acre site on the north side of Schoolcraft Road is the former Cloverlanes bowling alley, which Uhazie said opened in 1962 and closed in 2015. The self-storage conversion reuses the original building footprint, with a drive aisle running through the lower level between electronically controlled overhead doors on the east and west sides. The parcel measures 846 feet along Schoolcraft Road by an average depth of 285.18 feet.

The two new buildings go in on the existing west parking area and will cost the site 28 recreational vehicle spaces. Uhazie reported that since the study meeting the petitioner had submitted a photometric plan showing readings above the ordinance's 0.5 foot-candle limit at the northern property line where it meets residential, along with truck turning diagrams and color elevations. The elevations show EIFS siding on the upper half, red-brown modular brick below, and a light stone metal panel skirt at the parapet.

The petitioner's representative, appearing on behalf of Contineo Group, acknowledged the lighting exceedance up front and committed to revising fixtures. He walked the commission through a turning diagram showing a truck towing a boat trailer negotiating the center drive aisle without having to stop or crank the wheel hard over, and said he hoped the layout was idiot-proof.

Droze was the only commissioner with questions, and he had several: the lighting layout is three fixtures on each side of each building with nothing on the north or south faces; the turning exhibit shows vehicles tracking over curbs near the east driveway, which he suggested resolving by moving the fence; and several overlapping vehicle paths at that driveway turned out to include a fire truck. Bollards at building corners and along the drive aisle, the representative said, mean vehicles will strike something before they strike a building. Wilshaw added that he shared Droze's concern, having been on the site and found it tight.

No one from the audience spoke. Dinaro read the fifteen-condition approving resolution in full before the vote.

Item 6 — Parking behind Fountain Bleu, over one objection Petition 2026-06-01-01, Optalis Healthcare

Held over from July 14, when the petitioner did not appear, the petition asks to rezone the rear 25 feet of five Camden Street parcels — four with single-family homes, one vacant, all owned by the petitioner — and fold them into the Fountain Bleu property to the west. Each lot would retain roughly 165 feet of depth, still conforming to setback requirements.

The architect representing the ownership said the request is driven by the position of the facility's main entrance relative to its existing parking. Wilshaw again set expectations: tonight is zoning; a site plan comes back separately before Council votes on both.

Staff had raised, and the commission had discussed, whether P (Parking) would be the more appropriate designation — a classification that would bar anything but parking on the strip. The architect said Optalis had never intended to pursue P, that it had surfaced as a suggestion in preliminary discussions and was filed in error, and that a P designation would amount to a spot zone with no consistent zoning around it and no frontage on any roadway. C-1, he argued, matches the parent parcel and preserves the existing C-1-to-N-1 adjacency rather than introducing a fourth zoning classification to the site.

Dinaro was unmoved, and said so at length. She supported the parking and said the plan itself was fine. What she would not vote for was a commercial designation whose implications outlast the current owner.

Buying up the residential and turning it into a parking lot is one thing. But buying up the residential, turning it into a parking lot and later developing it into something else is problematic for the neighborhood. Commissioner Wafa Dinaro

The facility's owner came to the podium to argue the strip is only 30 feet wide and about 300 feet long — too small to build on. The packet describes the area to be rezoned as the rear 25 feet of each parcel. Wilshaw stepped in to keep the exchange from becoming a back-and-forth. Droze established that only the rear portion is being rezoned, with the Camden frontage remaining N-1 and single-family, and confirmed the intent is a lot combination bringing the strip into the parent parcel.

Ventura turned the discussion to the five houses themselves. He said he had found a wide range of condition and landscape maintenance among them, with the homes closer to Plymouth Road in better shape, and asked what the long-term plan was. The owner said the homes are rented, that they intend to remodel, and that one tenant in particular is careless about his yard and trash. Ventura's response was direct: the neighborly thing would be to maintain the properties to the standard everyone else on the street keeps.

The Greenleaf Commission speaker returned to question the logic of shaving depth off four single-family lots when the vacant parcel at the north end, also owned by the petitioner, sits next to the driveway and could be developed as parking and zoned separately. The owner also volunteered that the oldest person living in Livonia, at 110 years old, resides at the facility — and that convenience for residents like her sister, who is about 80, is the point of moving parking closer to the door.

Bongero moved approval, Ventura supported, and the resolution carried 5–1 with Dinaro opposed.

Present at the meeting

• Chairman Ian Wilshaw
• Vice Chairman Glen W. Long, Jr. — absent
• Secretary Sam Caramagno
• Commissioners David Bongero, Wafa Dinaro, Patrick Droze, Peter H. Ventura
• Planning staff Jacob Uhazie, Assistant Planning Director; Kristoffer Canty, Planner IV; and one additional planning staff member

Correspondence read into the record across the six petitions came from David W. Lear, P.E., Assistant City Engineer; Brian R. Kukla, Fire Marshal; Sgt. Brendan Adams of the Traffic Bureau; Jerome Hanna, Director of Inspection; Ermon Sims, Chief Accountant; and Susan Nash, Livonia City Treasurer.